Bush administration officials (and fellow travelers) aren’t the only ones who believe that when Americans talk about withdrawing from Iraq, it “emboldens the enemy.” Two Harvard researchers recently found that in periods following intensified criticism of the Iraq War by the American public and in the U.S. media, insurgent violence in Iraq increased by 5 to 10 percent. Using data on rates of insurgent attacks, Iraqi access to international news, frequency of antiwar statements in the American media, and U.S. public opinion polls—and controlling for other factors—the authors found that insurgents do not just randomly wreak havoc, but react strategically to developments in American politics. Specifically, when insurgents perceive a drop in American resolve, they unleash more destruction, thereby increasing the cost of fighting for the U.S. military and, they hope, tipping the scales toward a withdrawal. The authors conclude that a “systematic response” in the form of “emboldenment” is evident among insurgents. Of course, the report doesn’t suggest simply cutting off Iraqi access to CNN. Given that insurgents appear to act rationally to achieve their goals, the authors instead suggest a shift in counterinsurgency strategy away from search-and-destroy, and toward deterrence and incapacitation.

Economists have long argued that a rational person should walk around with a fat roll of cash—$551.05, to be precise, based on factors like interest rates, ATM fees, and time wasted making withdrawals. But evidence (and common sense) shows that Americans carry far less: roughly $100. In a new paper, a researcher at Bard College explains this apparent contradiction by calculating the hidden costs of theft. Classic models predict that the probability of getting robbed decreases only slightly the amount we should hold, to $510.05 (using 1995 rates, for technical reasons). But in his new model, the author incorporates two important concepts—the “don’t flash your cash” theory (in which the probability of getting mugged increases with the amount of cash held) and the indirect costs of robbery (such as injuries, psychological trauma, medical bills, and time off work)—and finds that carrying a lot of cash is riskier than once thought. As a result, he concludes that prudent Americans should actually carry about $76. The new model, though rough, helps measure the sum of our fears: Americans had $96 billion less in their pockets, at the time the data were collected, than they would have had in a crime-free world. Although this provides some benefits (interest gained while the money sits in an account), it has more costs (the time it takes to go to the bank). All told, the author estimates, the fear of being robbed now saps us of $14.6 billion a year.

The private-tutoring industry is reshaping the education landscape of both rich and poor nations, yet policy makers largely haven’t noticed, argues a new report from the World Bank. The authors survey evidence from 22 economically diverse countries, including the United States, and find that between 25 and 90 percent of students have worked with tutors at some point. In countries such as Turkey and Korea, spending on private tutoring nearly matches the percentage of GDP spent on the formal public education system. Although the authors conclude that strong tutoring programs do increase student achievement, they caution that without stricter government regulation, widespread tutoring could block much-needed improvements in the public system, increase inequality among students, lead to teacher corruption (particularly in developing countries), and eventually erode the “quality and efficiency of the public schools.”

What would happen if no one believed in free will, but instead assumed that all their actions were predetermined? For one thing, according to a recent study, we’d end up with a lot of greedy cheaters. A psychologist and a marketing professor asked two groups of undergraduates to read passages from a book by the biophysicist Francis Crick. Students in one group read a passage that argued against the possibility of free will, while students in the other group read a neutral passage on consciousness. The subjects then took a basic arithmetic test on a computer but were told that, because of a glitch in the program, the computer would automatically feed them the right answer to each question unless they pressed a key to stop it. The computer secretly recorded what they did. The researchers found that those students who had read Crick’s argument against individual agency were substantially more likely to cheat, and that they showed less faith in free will than their counterparts in a follow-up survey. The authors conclude that even if free will is an illusion, it is “an illusion that nevertheless offers some functionality” when it comes to encouraging moral behavior.

Could a say-nothing press be the cause of our do-nothing Congress? With fears growing that media consolidation is leading to less informed citizens and less responsible politicians, two economists measured how the quantity of local news coverage affects the quality of governance. They found that local newspapers—especially those with coverage areas that closely overlap congressional districts—are vital in keeping voters knowledgeable and congress members accountable to their constituents. Residents of districts with more press coverage of their delegations are better able to name their representatives, identify their political ideologies, and say whether they like them. Congress members in such districts are more likely to stand witness at hearings (by 46 percent), diverge from the party line to help constituents, and serve on important committees. They also steer 10 percent more federal cash back home.

GPS navigators have spared men around the world from having to roll down their windows to ask for directions, but the devices may not be leading them to their destinations any faster. Four researchers compared the effectiveness of a cell phone equipped with a GPS receiver to traditional paper maps and to “direct experience” (first walking through a route with a guide, then trying it alone). They asked 66 participants each to walk six different routes, finding their way each time using one of the three navigational aids, and later to sketch from memory the routes they had taken. The GPS users traveled longer distances, walked more slowly, and made more stops during the walk than the participants using the low-tech methods, and they made more directional errors and rated the overall experience as more difficult than did the direct-experience group. Perhaps because the GPS users were more focused on the information on their small screens than on their surroundings, the maps they drew showed a less accurate recollection of their routes. “For the GPS system to become a helpful ‘navigator,’” the authors conclude, “there is still room for improvement.”

The Chinese government has invested some $40 billion to remake Beijing—with broad streets and colossal skyscrapers—in time for the 2008 Olympic Games. But according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, much of this construction boom has been achieved on the backs of severely mistreated migrant workers. Between 1 million and 2 million construction workers, about 90 percent of them migrants, now work in the city. The authors of the study conducted interviews with workers at nine different sites and found widespread abuse: migrants routinely were not paid until the end of the year, and in some instances were not paid at all. They received only small amounts of food, “often inedible,” for which they were charged out of their paychecks. Most of them lacked insurance, despite the high rate of injury and death at construction sites, and those who tried to unionize and strike were harassed by “hoodlums” hired by the construction companies. When the authors visited the workers’ quarters, they found 20 men sharing 10 beds, without heat in the winter, and reported that on-site housing “is of poor quality, overcrowded and often lacks washing facilities.” The report demands that the International Olympic Committee do more to protect migrants working on Olympic sites, and threatens to publicize the workers’ conditions to spectators at the games if the IOC fails to act.

Despite all kinds of government tinkering, market forces and idealism (or at least the chance to righteously upstage one’s neighbors) seem to be the biggest motivations for buying hybrid cars. A new study by two public-policy scholars at Harvard finds that while federal and state tax breaks and other policy inducements encourage Americans to buy hybrids, the price of gasoline is a much bigger incentive—and “social preference” is the biggest of all. Carmakers sold more than 250,000 hybrids in 2006 alone, and governments have tried various novel policies to keep the assembly lines buzzing. States like California and New Jersey now give hybrid drivers the right to zip down high-occupancy-vehicle lanes, while cities like New Haven and San Jose have reduced or even waived public-parking fees for hybrids. But while sales-tax waivers seem to be the most effective government action, spurring an estimated 6 percent of hybrid sales, soaring gas prices provide an even more compelling inducement, associated with 27 percent of sales. And a buyer’s preference for leaving a smaller carbon footprint or for supporting energy security—or just for driving “an observably ‘green’ vehicle”—proves to be the most effective tool, accounting for 36 percent of all hybrids leaving the dealer’s lot.

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Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

You’ve likely seen the video before: a stream of kids, confronted with a single, alluring marshmallow. If they can resist eating it for 15 minutes, they’ll get two. Some do. Others cave almost immediately.

This “Marshmallow Test,” first conducted in the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the ongoing war between impulsivity and self-control. The kids have to tamp down their immediate desires and focus on long-term goals—an ability that correlates with their later health, wealth, and academic success, and that is supposedly controlled by the front part of the brain. But a new study by Alexander Soutschek at the University of Zurich suggests that self-control is also influenced by another brain region—and one that casts this ability in a different light.

Modern slot machines develop an unbreakable hold on many players—some of whom wind up losing their jobs, their families, and even, as in the case of Scott Stevens, their lives.

On the morning of Monday, August 13, 2012, Scott Stevens loaded a brown hunting bag into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, then went to the master bedroom, where he hugged Stacy, his wife of 23 years. “I love you,” he told her.

Stacy thought that her husband was off to a job interview followed by an appointment with his therapist. Instead, he drove the 22 miles from their home in Steubenville, Ohio, to the Mountaineer Casino, just outside New Cumberland, West Virginia. He used the casino ATM to check his bank-account balance: $13,400. He walked across the casino floor to his favorite slot machine in the high-limit area: Triple Stars, a three-reel game that cost $10 a spin. Maybe this time it would pay out enough to save him.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.

A report will be shared with lawmakers before Trump’s inauguration, a top advisor said Friday.

Updated at 2:20 p.m.

President Obama asked intelligence officials to perform a “full review” of election-related hacking this week, and plans will share a report of its findings with lawmakers before he leaves office on January 20, 2017.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Friday that the investigation will reach all the way back to 2008, and will examine patterns of “malicious cyber-activity timed to election cycles.” He emphasized that the White House is not questioning the results of the November election.

Asked whether a sweeping investigation could be completed in the time left in Obama’s final term—just six weeks—Schultz replied that intelligence agencies will work quickly, because the preparing the report is “a major priority for the president of the United States.”

Democrats who have struggled for years to sell the public on the Affordable Care Act are now confronting a far more urgent task: mobilizing a political coalition to save it.

Even as the party reels from last month’s election defeat, members of Congress, operatives, and liberal allies have turned to plotting a campaign against repealing the law that, they hope, will rival the Tea Party uprising of 2009 that nearly scuttled its passage in the first place. A group of progressive advocacy groups will announce on Friday a coordinated effort to protect the beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act and stop Republicans from repealing the law without first identifying a plan to replace it.

They don’t have much time to fight back. Republicans on Capitol Hill plan to set repeal of Obamacare in motion as soon as the new Congress opens in January, and both the House and Senate could vote to wind down the law immediately after President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office on the 20th.